


Syzygy

by toraffles



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood Magic, F/M, I'll add more tags as I think of them, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Polyamory, Runes, Self-Harm in a way, Self-Insert, Squibs, Women Being Awesome, asexual doesn't mean aromantic, asexual protagonist, blue and orange morality, but tbh she isn't very romantic either, elle has the common sense of a wet rock, fenrir is a damn creep and i love it, please pray for her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-06-27 09:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toraffles/pseuds/toraffles
Summary: A flame is in my blood, burning dry life to the bone. I do not sing of stone. Now, I sing of wood.(this is real. she has worked bone and blood for it, after all.)





	Syzygy

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title: **the art of defenestration**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the cryptic summary. i couldn't think of how to summarize this mess so instead i decided i might as well make it aesthetic. maturity rating may change as story progresses.

I spark into consciousness without even having realized I'd fallen out of it, eyes snapping open at the sudden knot of disquiet deep in my belly. I scan my surroundings, panic rising when I realize nothing is familiar to me, not the mint colour of the walls or the polished texture of the dark floorboards or the surfeit of piled boxes reaching to a ceiling too high.

The room is far, far too large and has too many angles to belong in my house. The air itself smells different in some indescribable way, and I know I am definitely not at home anymore, though I know next to nothing else.

I’m too disoriented to move from the position that I’ve found myself in, sitting on the floor curled against a corner, the walls curving protectively around my spine and my arms wedged into the nook under my bent knees. The closest object is several feet away, but I feel crowded.

A bead of sweat crawls down the back of my neck and into the neck of my shirt.

It’s hot.

My mind sludges feverishly through a haze of confusion in an attempt to catalogue the situation — only to then drive itself into a frenzy, because there are only two explanations I can think of to explain this, and neither are at all good.

Fingers trembling from anxiety, I extract my arms and pat myself down, checking for any restraints or ropes, zip ties, cuffs, for skin that might be reddened from contact with any type of bond, for I know I have easily marked skin. There’s nothing of the sort, and I withdraw my attention into myself, in search of muscles strained from extended time in a single position, the taste of chemicals in my throat, limbs slow and heavy from sedatives, anything at all that would suggest I had been in an artificially induced sleep.

I'm not suffering so much as a sore neck, and this only worries me more.

A kidnapping, while frightening and confusing - there would be no point, for I am not particularly skilled or wealthy or important – could at least explain my change in locale, my extreme disorientation, my gap in memory, on external factors. Otherwise, the only other conclusion I can reasonably come to is that there is something wrong _internally_. At some point between my last memory of sitting in my room despairing over an essay and this very moment, something must have happened.

Years of psychology courses begin to coalesce into possibilities. _Perhaps_ , suggests a cold, academic part of my mind, I have acquired some sort of amnesia – likely retrograde, as I've been sitting here for longer than my short term memory would be able to maintain and still remember thoughts from several minutes ago.

Perhaps I have suffered a severe, long-term case of dissociation, even though I’ve never had a history of dissociating, or perhaps I'd always been afflicted with multiple personality disorder and my alternate personality had seen fit to _take over my body_ for… for who knows how long – several weeks, a year, two, three, _how many years have I lost_ — but no, wait, it’s called dissociative identity disorder now, and that kind of manifestation of it only exists in fiction, and I have no history of childhood trauma anyway, so then maybe I’d recently experienced something so traumatic that I went into a fugue state and what could possibly be that traumatic, had someone I loved died, _what_ **_happened_** —

“Stop,” I hiss silently under my breath. I pinch my cheeks harshly, as I'm prone to do when I'm frustrated with myself.

 _Stop, stop, stop. Focus._ Focus _. Okay. First, what’s first?_

I need… I need a list.

Lists are good. Lists are comfortable. Lists have staved off many a panic attack in the past, and have gotten me through innumerable high-stress crises.

First, I’ve got to figure out how much time has passed since my last moment of awareness, if indeed any time has passed at all.

Second, I need to make sure I haven't lost important memories other than the knowledge of how I got here – my name, for instance, my family, my address, key phone numbers, basic geography. Everything else can be dealt with later.

Third, I need to see if there's anyone else in this place with me, and if there is, whether that person is hostile or a potential ally. Both options possibly in plural.

Fourth, I need to know where this location is, specifically, on a map.

And fifth is an escape, if I really _have_ been kidnapped. If not, I'll find a phone and call my mother or sister and get myself back home, one way or another. Once I'm home – well, I don't have enough information right now to make that particular list, but I'll get to that hurdle later.

This is good. Simple. Yes, okay, I can do this.

I run my hands over the thin leggings and gauzy cardigan that I'm wearing. They're definitely my style of clothing, exactly as I would wear them. The cardigan is one size too big with sleeves to my fingertips and the hem to my thighs, the stretchy camisole underneath is fitted but breathable, and the leggings are snug and comfortable, tucked into a pair of Vans slip-ons.

 _Why am I wearing shoes indoors?_ I think, oddly concerned with this small detail.

It's strange, though. While they look and feel similar to clothes that I would purchase myself, I don't own _any_ of these clothes. I've never owned a pair of Vans in my life. And the last I remember, the entire country had been a couple months deep into winter, not at all warm enough to warrant wearing such an ensemble.

I can't hear the dull background noise of a central heating system, the floor beside me is faintly cool to the touch, eliminating the possibility of the floor being heated, and I can see that the oil heater standing several feet away isn't plugged in. The warmth in the air is natural. Either I've magically travelled across the equator, or several months must have passed, if not over a full year.

 _Or several years_ , a cruel little voice whispers.

That can’t be right, it can't have been more than a year or maybe two; I don't – I don't _feel_ older. Isn't your body supposed to feel different when you age? I lift my palms and stare at them. Still the same fingers, attached to the same palms with fine lines leading down to the same wrist. Except… I wrap my fingers around the opposite wrist. As I suspected, it’s noticeably thinner than I’m used to.

My body feels inexplicably strange, too. Not older _per say_ , but how do you quantify something like that?

I scramble to my feet and cast my gaze around. The room itself is bent like the letter ‘L’, all right angles and straight lines. Along the longer arm, there are two doors opposite to each other; one of them opens into something that looks like a bathroom, so I assume the other leads to a hallway. Past the doors, on the far wall, there is a window facing the street and a large wall-to-wall desk pushed up under it.

To my right, the wider, shorter arm holds a king bed: there's a purse flung carelessly onto the pale blue duvet, basking under the light of the open window over the headboard. A spread of bookcases stretch all across the inner wall, creating a buffer between the wall and the bed, and on the outer wall, open folding doors lead to a walk-in closet. Just past those doors is a dark-framed standing mirror, pushed up against the wall.

This is a bedroom, I immediately realize, one that's been moved into recently. Perhaps even my _own_ bedroom. A quick, curious peek into a couple of the boxes nearest me reveals folded clothes and bedsheets. Would a kidnapper take such care of their captive, going so far as to purchase them expansive, fully furnished rooms, clothes in their own taste, thick duvets and unbarred windows?

I doubt it. That particular theory is showing less and less merit by the moment.

Snagging the peach-coloured purse by its strap, I stumble my way over a few stacks of boxes to get to the mirror. I place myself directly in front, and then tentatively peer into it.

I look… well, I look almost exactly like myself, and it doesn't seem like I've aged a single day. Of course, it’s always been rather difficult to place my age based on my appearance, as I have a young face and childish tells – such as idle tugging at my sleeves and hems – that only compound the illusion.

That being said, though my defining features remain exactly the same, something seems… different. Not older, just _different_. I trace my gaze over my eyes, my nose, my mouth, trying to find where the disparity is hiding.

I have always had a wide-eyed, inquisitive sort of face, with faint dimples on my cheeks and chin that appear when my mouth curves in any direction. I am quick to smile, and usually do so when perusing my own reflection because I prefer to look at cheerful expressions, even if they're my own.

Right now though, I'm looking at my reflection with the most neutral face I can manage – but despite my best efforts, my expression falls naturally into melancholy lines, as if it is axiomatically predisposed to do so, an occurrence that is wholly unfamiliar to me. I try smiling instead, and find that I’m missing a couple of the tiny dimples on my chin. I’ve never given much thought to them before, but this particular change in my appearance causes a prick of discontent.

My cheeks are still rounded, but less so, and my hair is far longer than I remember ever having grown it, though it still walks the ambiguous line between wavy and straight. The texture is smooth and soft throughout rather than being coarse and half-burnt near the ends – the result of a misencounter with an inept hairdresser and a failed straightening perm a year ago. Or at least, I remind myself, a year before my most recent memory. It looks startlingly healthy too, the way it had been until my early teens, before I started struggling with at-home dyes that my hair was too dark to take to.

My skin, in contrast, is pale. No, not just pale – _too_ pale. Sickly pale. As if I haven't seen natural daylight in many, many months. My nose remains the same, as does the shape of my mouth, but my eyes… my eyes? Are my eyes larger?

No, it's not that my eyes are larger – it's that the lens of my glasses are thinner. I take them off and blink in surprise. I can see… perfectly well. I can see everything in distinct clarity, as if I had never needed my vision corrected in the first place. I peek out of the closet and scan the room again.

The edges on even the furthest box are crisp and sharp. I can clearly count every wrinkle on the bedspread, and the shape of the doorknob on the hall door, even across the room. I can see the individual laces criss-crossing on my shoes and then the faint trace of blue-green veins on the back of my outstretched hand. I put my glasses back on and – oh. _Oh_.

I couldn’t tell because I didn’t have anything to compare against before, but if I thought I could see perfectly well without the glasses, it’s nothing compared to how well I can see _now_. I’m suddenly bombarded with an inhuman level of detail, every strain in the wood of the mirror frame, every tiny fold of skin on my fingers, the individual strands in the weave of my shirt. The sheer amount of minutia that is being brought to my attention is overwhelming, and I slide up the glasses to rest on my hair instead.

Looking for more clues, I fiddle with the clasp of the purse I'd picked up, lift open the flap closure and pick carefully through the collection of items.

In the larger front compartment, there is a wallet, a couple of pens and hair ties, a cheque book, keys, hand lotion, bubblegum, a seldom-used tube of lipstick, and a small makeup pouch with no makeup – a peek inside reveals that it is filled instead with sanitary napkins, a disposable tissue pouch, and a plain compact mirror. In the narrower space behind the division, I find a palm-sized notebook, a heavy, jingling coin purse, a letter written in Korean, and a passport.

The cheque book and letter are strange additions, but the other objects are akin to those that I tend to keep – used to keep? – in my own purse, barring the quite significant lack of a smartphone or earphones. It is only once I begin investigating further that I find things start becoming very, very odd.

The passport is a dark green, and ‘Republic of Korea’ is gilded in gold above the South Korean emblem, with ‘Passport’ written under it. I had the same passport when I was a young child, but my most recent one should be a blue so dark as to look black – and it _should_ say ‘Canada’. I've been a Canadian citizen since primary school, after all, and I've lived in the country since I was a toddler. I'm barely Korean anymore, so there's no reason to believe I'd have re-applied for citizenship nor could I possibly have regained it so quickly.

But, indeed, when I open it, the name written inside is mine. The photo is entirely mine, and rather recent as well. The nationality says, ‘Republic of Korea’, and the date of birth…

The date of birth says September 3, 1964, which is the correct birthdate, but not the right birth _year_. The date of issue is July 18, 1985, and the date of expiry is July 18, 1990. I was born in the nineties; I wouldn't even have been a tickle in my father’s leg at the time this was made.

This passport, I decide, is the most impressive fake I have ever seen. It's woefully misinformed – the last I remember, it was the late 2010s, meaning the current year is at least that; no one who’s ever so much as _looked_ at me will believe that I’m fifty-something years old, not to mention the long past dates of issue and expiry – but it’s very aesthetically convincing. A particularly well-made novelty item.

I flip through the pages, and find that there are even stamps on the first few pages – two of them, in fact. One is for departure from Gimpo Airport, and one marks an arrival at Heathrow, on July 22, 1985.

I flip back to the second page and squint. There's something that's bothering me about it.

Closer inspection quickly betrays the error: whoever transcribed my name did so incorrectly. My surname is ‘Sung’, but on the passport it says ‘Sun’, as if the author had forgotten to finish the word. And the first name written in the passport, which should be my Korean given name – my _legal_ name – has been replaced by my English one, the common name that I actually use in day to day life. For the person who made this, who had such an eye for detail as to match the exact shade of the little detailing on the pages, to have missed such obvious errors…

It's odd. It's very odd.

Unfortunately, I am still no closer to figuring out the date. I finish my inspection and turn to the other item of interest. The letter.

The thing is, I may be ethnically Korean, and I may have been born in Korea, but that doesn't mean I'm _fluent_ in the Korean language. My parents moved the family to Canada when I was barely able to string a sentence – basically still a fetus, I'd joke to my friends – and that meant I’d never received a proper education in the written language, other than my mother’s attempts to teach me the characters until I entered first grade.

Though I learned to speak Korean more or less fluently, save for a comparatively limited pool of vocabulary, I’m crippled with respect to literacy. I can read individual characters but I must actively focus and sound out each group of characters together in order to form a word, so a whole sentence is, at best, cumbersome for me to read. And that’s assuming I understand all of the vocabulary used.

A mass of words like this is overwhelming, and I dread having to attempt deciphering it. Without google translate on hand, it'll take at least an hour, and I'll need a Korean-English dictionary at the very least. Not for the first time, I wish I had my phone.

Luckily, the date the letter was written is scrawled in the top right corner: 1985 _nyun_ 7 _wol_ 16 _il_.

July 16, 1985.

This could mean absolutely nothing, of course. It could be a fake, or it could be an old letter that I had somehow gotten my hands on before waking up today. You know, despite the fact that the paper looks new despite its many wrinkles and tiny stains, and the ink hasn't faded at all – rather, it seems to still be glistening – and I'm _pretty_ sure that's my mother's signature along the bottom of the page and my legal name written on the envelope.

Well. It could still be a fake.

But then again, I've recently woken up in a strange room in someone else's clothes during the wrong season without any explanation for anything and there are distinct changes of my own body that are hard to reason away and something very freaky is going on and I really, really, _really_ think I should keep my options open. So I toss the purse back to the bed and pick my way through the boxes straight to the large window on the far side of the room, eyeing the desk pushed up underneath it.

I push away a small wooden box to a corner of the desk and boost myself up to stare out onto the street. Just to check, I tell myself. Just in case.

A perfectly suburban street stretches out below me. It's filled with identically large, boxy houses and neatly trimmed privet hedges, with low garden walls and tidy flowerbeds set in immaculate front lawns. Every single house is indistinguishable from the ones beside it, as if someone had copied and pasted one plot of land dozens of times until they ran out of street.

There are cars in open garages, car parked in driveways, cars dotting the curb. A trio of cars meander down the left side of the road – which is in itself incredibly foreign to see – and one of them splits off to the side, into the driveway of the house directly to my left. All the way down the block and even past that, _every single car_ is of an extremely old model. And I don’t mean one or two wheezing ancients among a lineup of the newest series from whichever company, or even a collection of cars from a decade back – I mean that I can't see a single car that looks like it was released in the second millennium.

But they're all _gleaming_ somehow, every single one of them, they look sparkling new without a single dent or scratch, even though they must all be quite old.

The neighbour’s car shudders off, and from the driver’s door emerges a large, beefy man in business casual wear, his gray sweater straining against the round of his stomach. His dark, bushy mustache is as well groomed as the front lawn of his home, and his hair is black and thick. The white door to his house opens by itself and a woman in an apron emerges from within, tall and blonde and skinny. In contrast to the man, who has very little neck, she seems to have more length of neck than ordinary. They greet each other and the woman ushers the man into the house, bringing my attention to the large number four nailed to the door as it swings shut.

The median strip for this subdivision begins roughly across from the house I’m currently in, and near the edge of the small island of grass, there is a sign hammered into the ground. From this angle, I can just barely read what it says.

 _Privet Drive_.

I stop breathing for several long moments, can only stare and stare and stare at the words. Only when bright sparks dot my vision and a humming emptiness licks at the corners of my mind do I finally shudder in a quick burst of air, and resume breath.

I slide off the wide desk and cross the room to seat myself heavily onto the bed, feeling as if my center of balance is tilting away from gravity. Slipping out of my shoes, I draw my legs to my chest, curl myself forward, forehead to knees, and try to think.

Okay. Okay, so. Obviously this cannot be what I think it is, because _obviously_ , that kind of thing doesn't happen in real life. And as Sherlock Holmes once said, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." What I'm currently thinking is impossible, so… so I have to exclude it. Yes. Good.

I am _not_ in the body of a parallel version of myself living in the world of _Harry Potter_.

 _Obviously_.

Alright, so if that's the impossible, what’s the improbable in this scenario? It could be that the movies are being re-filmed for the purposes of being more faithful to the books. The residents of 4 Privet Drive certainly look exactly as they are written. I could be on the set as an extra. But I don't see any cameras anywhere, and the fake passport and the pile of boxes serve absolutely no purpose in that case.

Besides, nothing happened in _Harry Potter_ during the year 1985, there's no reason for it to be written on every document I have on hand. Which, granted, is currently only two… but still.

I could have been admitted to a cult of people devoted to pretending that they live in the world of _Harry Potter_. A real-life recreation of the film, for personal enjoyment. Except I seriously doubt that my mother would ever allow me to actually go through with such a thing, let alone _play along_. I remember the handwritten date on the letter still clutched in my fingers and shake my head. Yeah, no. I was always quite fond of _Harry Potter_ , but never so much as to give up modern technology, in any case. My phone, my collection of music, _the internet_.

I honestly cannot think of any other explanation as to the existence of a large, bulky man and his skinny blonde wife living in 4 Privet Drive in what looks like the 1980s, nor the lack of memory as to how I have arrived in what looks like a foreign country in what seems like a foreign body.

“This is actually really – terrible – ” I start to say, but then I stop. My breath hitches. I freeze in place.

“A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K,” I chant quickly, loudly. “L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z, _oh my god_.”

I have… a Korean accent. _I have a Korean accent_.

I’ve been a native English speaker for as long as I can remember. Being fluent in English is a core part of who I am, because it’s the _only_ language I’m unequivocally fluent in, it's the only language I can use to properly interact with the world.

My high-school French is barely a passing memory, my German and Japanese limited to single first year courses in university. As for Korean, I may know most of the words commonly used in daily conversations, but anything more complicated than that goes far over my head — _I don't even know all the days of the week_. And while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a Korean accent in itself, after all the confusion of everything else I just… I just want to be able to trust that I’m still myself. I want to sound like me, not a – a stranger.

But my tongue feels clumsy and heavy when I try to twist it into the correct shapes. The words that roll from my lips don't match the voice of my thoughts. I can't make the words I speak form the way I want them to _at all_.

“Load,” I try. “Road. Load. Road.”

They sound exactly the same.

Fuck. _Fuck_. I cannot _believe_ that of all things it is _this_ that cuts me the deepest. This is just…

“ ** _Fuck_**.”

Everything sucks.

“This is complete and utter garbage,” I tell myself, staring blankly at the wall.

I feel numb. And also kind-of half dead. Probably not in a healthy way.

Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe I'm having a delusion. Hallucinations. Schizophrenia, caused by an excess of dopamine in my brain. Alzheimer's, correlated with a decrease in acetylcholine. I know Alzheimer's causes delusions. Does it cause hallucinations?

I should know this. I'm a psychology major, _I should know this_.

Dimly, I register the heavy pound of my heartbeat against my temples, the roar of blood rushing through my ears, the harsh whittle of air through my teeth, too fast and too shallow and _too much_. Sticky spots of blackness spread across my sight, and the world feels thick like static against my skin.

Good thing I'm already on the bed, I decide faintly. Because I'm probably going to pass out.

And then I do.

 

* * *

 

After I wake up from my impromptu nap, I'm able to think a little more coherently. My usual approach to issues is to go to sleep and hope things will be improved when I wake up. Even though I’d actually fainted and not voluntarily fallen asleep, it still followed the same principle.

Unfortunately, nothing at all has improved. It wasn't a nightmare; I’m still here, wherever here is. The sky has fallen dark outside and not a single person has come to check up on me yet. I know this because there are small stacks of boxes right up against the door – both doors, in fact – and they haven't moved at all since I first became conscious, hours ago.

So either I have the most negligent kidnappers in the world, or I don't have any kidnappers. Good to know.

I remember everything that had happened hours ago, which means I most certainly don’t have anterograde amnesia. I remember both my mother and sister’s phone numbers, as well as my home address and all of my personal identification details, so none of those memories are compromised either. Also good to know.

And – the accent… a new accent isn't too bad, all things considered. It isn't that thick.

Besides, if Hollywood actors can train themselves into adopting Russian, British, American accents, then I can develop my own accent all over again, and _goddammit_ that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I know how I should sound and I know how my mouth should move. That has to be good enough.

Slowly, painstakingly, I slide off the bed and wobble onto my feet. I don't bother with shoes; I have no fondness towards them, and I hate wearing shoes inside a house. It just isn't right. There’s a rush of blood and a brief dizziness when I straighten up, but it disappears soon enough and I make my way right around the bend of the wall to the door nearest me.

It's an ensuite, as I suspected. Rectangular and pointlessly large, it has a towel closet, a sink vanity, a separate jacuzzi and shower stall, and a toilet in the corner, just out of view of the window. The walls are a faint ash-gray and the wide vanity mirror is framed in white wood, matching the white sink top and cabinet. The floor is tiled with a pale, tan stone, streaked with white and rough against my feet. The window is above the bath, with the blinds pulled all the way up.

I can see the expanse of the night sky over the roof of 2 Privet Drive next door. There are more stars than I’ve ever seen back home, and they shine almost unnaturally bright. It's a beautiful sight.

I don't like it.

I retreat back into the bedroom and make my way to the other door, set in the opposite wall. I peek out and look both ways, in case there really is someone in the house with me.

Directly across the hall there is a broom closet, and the short length of hallway to my right holds a single door and a tiny window looking out the street. To the other side of the closet, the wall gives way to the railing of a staircase. The hallway is far longer to that side, so I turn right and peek into the only room there first.

It's a bedroom with light teal walls, considerably smaller than the one I had come out of, with much of the space already occupied by an empty double bed, a desk, and a bookshelf. On the wall beside the bed are double windows that look out onto the front garden, where a spread of flowers peer up at me with open faces.

I look at the naked mattress, currently stripped of all sheets, and think, _Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive…_

I turn and leave the room.

The rest of the upper floor is large but more or less ordinary. The two other rooms are both halfway between the master and smallest bedrooms in size, and painted in pale shades. Past the mouth of the staircase, the door to the second floor washroom hangs open, showing a glimpse of pearly walls and pearlier tiles.

I hesitate, but the lights are off and there are no sounds from within, so I decide the room is empty and instead carefully tread onto the first step of the staircase. It doesn't whine as I'm half afraid it will, and the wood feels steady and solid under my feet. One hand braced against the railing, I pad down the stairs and find myself in an entrance hall.

The floor is the same dark, glossy wood as the rest of the house, and the walls are the same robin egg blue as the upstairs hallway. Directly to my left is an open door that leads to another large washroom, and to my right, the rest of the hall leads further into the house. Ahead of me are white double doors. There is a large entry rug in front of them that looks barely used, and beside it, a freestanding coat closet and a tall shoe cupboard that contains only shoes in my size.

I glance behind me and then stride to the front entrance, carefully undoing the few locks and wincing when the sliding chain makes a clattering noise again the wood of the door. I pause, barely breathing, to listen for the sound of someone approaching.

Nothing. The house remains still and silent.

My shoulders are almost painfully tense as I push, and then pull at the door. It opens.

It opens without any resistance, and when I peer out, there is no hostile stranger waiting for me. Indeed there is no one at all, only a paved walkway, a terribly green lawn, neat flower gardens on either side of the door, and a residential street currently empty of any pedestrians. Everything is lit dimly by the yellow glow of street lamps and the faint spill of light from the windows of surrounding houses. I glance to my right, where there is a laneway to the garage, and then focus on the large ‘3’ affixed to the brick wall beside the doorway.

I purse my lips and retreat back into the house, knowing that I have nowhere else to go.

Even if I’m not in the world of _Harry Potter_ , which is a ridiculous thing to consider, and is probably – _probably_ – not true, and even if it isn't _nineteen eighty-five_ , a time before I was even born, I’m still assuredly in a foreign country. The Heathrow passport stamp, unfamiliar driving customs, and the British banknotes in the wallet paint an obvious picture, and I don't have the slightest clue where I would go or what I would do even if I left. Get lost immediately, knowing my sense of direction.

I trail my fingers over the base of the stairway as I pass by it, and briefly pause over a small door built into the wall.

 _The cupboard under the stairs_ , flits through the corner of my mind. I turn away from it and continue forward.

There are two large sliding doors ahead of me; the one on my left leads into a living room, and the one before me into a kitchen. There is, as I suspected, no one in either room, nor the dining room that is accessible through both. The living room contains an array of seating arrangements: a large black sectional couch, a smaller gray loveseat, and a pine green armchair set in front of a fireplace. Towering bookcases cover the walls on either side of the fireplace, and against the wall opposite the fireplace, there are shorter bookshelves within reach of the sectional.

There is also a television set. It’s small and thick, with a wooden frame, two dials to one side and a protuberant gray screen. An extremely outdated model, but – gleaming and new. Just like the cars.

I stare at the television from under lowered lashes. Something within my chest grows heavy and sinking.

Nails biting into my opposite wrist, I shudder through a deep, bracing breath and continue exploring the remaining few rooms.

I pass through the dining room while rounding into the kitchen, and find that it has nothing much of interest. It’s mostly dominated by a large table of heavy wood; along the far wall, there are French bay doors that open onto the backyard.

Near the entrance of the kitchen, tall chairs and stools are gathered around a sharply-angled island countertop, which bends parallels to the shape of the kitchen counters and cabinets. There’s a solid door in the furthest corner of the kitchen also leads to the backyard, with a mat laid in front of it and a shoe rack empty of shoes.

Facing this back door, pushed into the opposite corner, is a fair sized protrusion that must be a walk-in pantry. Cradled in the wall beside that is another door, leading into a large boiler room where the washer and dryer are kept, along with a fair-sized broom closet holding a variety of cleaning supplies: mops and brooms and a vacuum and chemicals I honestly don't know the names of.

When I return to the kitchen, I climb into one of the tall leather chairs and just… exhale.

There is no one else in the house. Every single appliance I've seen looks like it's been taken from a retro magazine, from the TV to the refrigerator, the stove, the microwave, the vacuum cleaner, even the toaster. And there are boxes everywhere. All over the house, in every single room, there are boxes, waiting to be unpacked.

While surveying the house, I'd managed to keep myself in a mostly calm, controlled state. Clinical, methodical. Panicking won't help me when I might need to think quickly on my feet. So I'd dug my nails into my skin and trudged on.

 _But_.

But.

I'm all by myself in this big, stupidly expensive looking house, during what's probably the mid-1980s, and there are _boxes everywhere_.

I like to organize things. I do. I find the very act of organization soothing and enjoyable. I love to shift objects around until I’ve found the positions most efficient for use, and I love when everything is neatly in place, exactly where I want it to be.

But— I’m entirely alone right now. I'm alone and confused and disoriented and exhausted, I don't know what the date is, I don't know where my family is, I don't know where _I_ am, and now it looks like if I'm stranded here I have to single-handedly unpack _a whole fucking house_.

Air whittles quickly between my parted lips and I have to close my eyes against everything. I feel like I'm teetering on the precipice of an impossibly short fall, and waiting at the bottom of the cliff is – a wretched monster. Even if I cannot escape it forever, I will stay out of its reach for as long as I can manage. I will. I will.

 _Calm down_. _Calm down. Calm down, calm down, calm down calm down_ calm down _._

Toes curling, I breathe harshly through my smarting teeth and try to maintain my composure, tremulous though it is. Emotion swells aggressively up into my throat so I swallow against it and crush my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

And then — I open my eyes and glance up, and by happenstance, I look straight at the plates piled in the sink. I pause mid-swallow. My hands spasm into tight fists.

Someone has left me their dirty dishes. Someone has left me their dirty dishes to clean and then just they just – _fucked off._

I… hate doing the dishes _._

I _hate_ doing the dishes.

I **fucking** **_hate_** doing the dishes.

Fury, thick and acrid and feverish hot scalds up through my esophagus and my next exhale is a hoarse scream of indignation, words clawing up off my tongue in a dense torrent.

“ _What the fuck_. What the fuck what the fuck _what the fuck_ who did this to me who the fuck did this I'll fucking **_kill them_** — ”

My heart pounds against the cage of my ribs in a rapid double tempo of _mur-der-mur-der-mur-der_ and I choke over the sick, sour scorch high in my nose, behind my eyes. Blood thrums like molten brimstone between tendons pulled taut, pools into my fingertips and makes them throb against my palm, where nails ache from gouging into skin.

My body is a funeral pyre and my mind is the inferno that it leads to and

**I**

**am**

**_burning_ **

and I don't so much breathe as I do fight for every fragment of air, struggling not to suffocate over the savagery of my emotions. Trembling furiously, I close my eyes and try not to acknowledge the warm dampness under my lashes, on my cheeks, dripping onto my lips.

I am not crying. I am not in this situation. This is not real.

I open my eyes.

Nothing has changed.

The rage overflows my body and spills out, and I imagine it dripping down from my limp fingers onto the floor, obscenely red against the dark floorboards. I slump into my seat. As anger leaves me in a torrent even more rushed than its arrival, all that's left is a bone-deep exhaustion and a light-headedness that makes me feel like I need to hold onto the counter to keep from floating away. I lift my shaking hands and sigh.

This, at least, I am familiar with. Just a bit of food deprivation; perhaps a day and a half worth of missed meals with a body that's not particularly healthy in the first place. I know I haven't been in this house for a full day, and a wall clock I’d passed by at some point proclaimed it to be two o’clock. It’s dark outside, so it must currently be two in the morning, and it seemed to be dusk when I’d, well… fainted, for the first time in my life.

So I've only been become aware of my, ah, _situation_ since around six or seven hours ago, not nearly long enough for this physical reaction. This means that the ‘me’ who was in this body previously had certainly not been feeding herself properly, which may be indicative of poor eating habits, or…

I swear under my breath and painstakingly slide to my feet, swaying like a limp ragdoll with every unsteady step to the fridge. If she – I – _she_ has left me in this kind of state with no food to fix it, I will drown myself in one of the stupid large bathtubs out of spite.

And oh, do I have a _lot_ of spite.

I tug on the handle of the fridge with both hands and scowl into it, half-dreading what I may see. Even just a few things that I could quickly prep and eat would be fine, basic things like eggs or milk or fruit.

I pause. Close the fridge door. Carefully open it again.

A slow smile overtakes me when I realize that the huge fridge is overstuffed with mouthwatering fare, enough to supply a few feasts and then some. There are sandwiches in plastic wedges, pastas in tupperware, jugs with sweet iced tea and squeezed juice, cakes and puddings, curries and pies and casseroles, cuts of meats and cheese, stews and soups and salads, fresh fruits and vegetables tucked away in the crisper drawers, milk and eggs aplenty.

It seems almost like the contents of the fridge are attempting to compensate for the entire hellish situation. I already have my heart set on several items, and my stomach gurgles suddenly, as if to declare that it is equal to the task at hand.

Eyes gleaming, I descend upon the offerings as a flock of ravens unto a carcass and find myself soon tearing into the food with just as much gusto.

The passage of a couple hours finds me slumped at the island counter again, gorged from a feast and yawning into a hand. After my meal, I'd reluctantly— _very_ reluctantly—done the dishes, the acrid edge of resentment having been dulled somewhat by the delicious meal. I'm falling into a food coma, but I fend it off long enough to wash up for bed with unfamiliar toiletries and change into unfamiliar bedclothes to lay myself into the unfamiliar bed.

Sleep cures everything, and I'm still half-convinced that I'm having a delirious fever dream, even though I've never been stuck in a dream before. As my exhaustion finally takes me under, I dazedly pray to a god I don't believe in that I'll wake up in the proper time, back home where I belong, and that all of this will have been merely a nightmare induced by stress.

The next morning disabuses me of any notion of waking up or a swift return home. Standing at the stoop of the house with a sandwich in one hand and iced tea in the other, I watch the next-door neighbour’s lawn with rapt attention, until a fallen piece of lettuce on my bare foot brings me back to myself several moments later. Slowly starting to chew my mouthful of sandwich again, I muse to myself that god must be like Santa — requests from non-believers are disregarded so thoroughly that you may as well have been whacked upside the head with a coal-filled stocking.

With all the subtlety of a thundering freight train, any prior doubts on my location are dashed quite singularly:

Tugging up weeds in the garden of Number 4 is a tiny green-eyed boy with tiny hands and a tiny, tiny scar on his forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I know the description of the house interior is tedious and oversaturated with detail (actually, isn't the whole chapter…) but I'd unfortunately made a full house plan by then, complete with furniture and colours, and I couldn't help but feel the need to use it after so many invested hours
> 
> -another self insert, this time an actual self insert rather than my usual ‘but they're exactly like their canon selves’ sort, and it’s the truest form of it (ie, physically dropping a version of myself in the fictional world). i say usual, but you'd only know that if you've seen me on fficnet. i have of course fudged most personal details, including the name, birthdate, other minor details, and later on elle takes a life of her own, so perhaps oc insert would be more accurate
> 
> -this has been a venture into writing in first person. i found midway that i have little affection for it, but i couldn't change the narrative point of view mid-chapter (it's an unholy thing to do), so i endured. however i cannot write the whole story in first person; even though you shouldn't change narrative PoV mid-story either, from next chapter and onwards, it'll all be written third person. because i do what i want!1!one!


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